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Indonesia’s political parties gears up for next year’s legislative election

Checks and balances: The Democratic Party selection team checks documents submitted by would-be legislative candidates at the party’s headquarters in Kramat, Central Jakarta, on April 3. Eligible political parties have until April 22 to submit their legislative candidacy lists for the 2014 election to the General Elections Commission (KPU). JP/Prodita Sabarini

I covered political parties’ preparation in recruiting and selecting prospective legislative candidates for next year’s election.

Sometimes watching the people sitting in parliament feels like watching a comedy show, until you realize that no one’s joking. Then you realize it’s more like watching a horror movie, and you get spooked a bit, until you remember that what you’re seeing is not a movie, it’s real life. Anti pornography law? Remember the porn-watching lawmaker from the Islamic Prosperous Justice Party nonetheless – after they release the anti-porn law? And now all this ridiculousness on witchcraft and living outside of marriage being criminalized in the Criminal Code.

So, I was quite excited covering the whole process of choosing candidates of people that will REPRESENT other people in deciding how we run this country. Admittedly, a lot of people don’t care about who will represent them in the election. So many say they’ll abstain from voting because they don’t trust politicians. But maybe if we pay more attention to this, we’ll actually can get people who really do care into the parliament.

I got help from The Post new cub reporter in covering for this reportage. Here are the reports